Zoology and wildlife conservation

Rewinding the memory record

Article Abstract:

Insight into how sleep benefits memory consolidation in human and other mammals is explained by recording neutral activity in the hippocampus, a brain region that is crucial for mnemonic processing. The hypothesis states that the formation of associations between a reward and the representation of elements of a rat's trajectory in the immediate past is boosted during sharp wave-associated replay by a neuromodulatory signal such as dopamine.

Microstructure of a spatial map in the entorhinal cortex

Article Abstract:

A directionally oriented and topographically organized neural map of the spatial environment was found in the dorsocaudal medial entorhinal cortex (dMEC). The coinciding position of the animal with any vertex of a regular grid of equilateral triangles spanning the surface of the environment activates the grid cell, which is the key unit of dMEC.